Information Technology & Social Media News

30 Ecom Strategies & Tactics To Master
No wonder most ecommerce teams feel overwhelmed. Off the top of our heads we came up with 30 complex "mini-systems" that must be mastered to create greatness in online commerce.

Gone are the days when a little of this and that could win the day in online retail. Today all 30 of these tactics and strategies dance together requiring sophisticated understanding of individual trends, tools and ideas to win.

Things change too fast to really KNOW anything. Instead teams must surf waves, learn and fail fast and then wax up their boards for another wild ride.

Did we miss any BIG IDEAS your ecommerce team is managing. Soon we will support this infographic with a http://www.Curagami.com post to further explain each strategy and tactic. In the meantime let us know what we missed in comments or email martin(at)Curagami.com.

Thanks and remember DEEP SLOW BREATHES and if you aren't having FUN your visitors will know. They will feel it.

Via Martin (Marty) Smith, Charles Mungai

Scoop.it Study
I've often thought Slideshare was the great underutilized weapon of content marketing. Thinking that and having the data to prove are two different things.

Thanks to the team at Scoop.it we now have the data to prove what I've FELT. In an extensive study the Scoop.it team shifted my thinking on Slideshare.

Always knew Slideshare was POWERFUL SEO VooDoo because I've had several decks BLOW UP such as:

http://www.slideshare.net/martinmartysmith/storytelling-new-seo 
Absolute #1 position on "Storytelling is the new SEO" and has been top ranked for over a year.

http://www.slideshare.net/martinsellingzoe/content-marketing-network 
This deck held on for a year and has slide out of ranking now.

You don't get much more SEO competitive than "Storytelling is the New SEO" and "Content Marketing Network so personal validation supports the Scoop.it team's great work here.

The other paradigm they shifted for me today was thinking of Slideshare as an important "visual marketing" tool. Decks are LEAN, FAST and VIRAL so great ways to share and build authority and traffic. Just wish I could get my Slideshare profile styled better. Anyone know the secret sauce for that?

Great work Scoopiteers!  

Via Martin (Marty) Smith

Thanks to recent Google changes, search engine optimization isn't nearly as powerful as it used to be. But that's OK--there's a better way.

Via TechinBiz

We hear a lot about content marketing these days. It is a phrase a lot of folks throw around to make themselves sound smarter but not many folks understand or

Via massimo facchinetti, Martin (Marty) Smith

Aprende 6 razones por las que el desarrollo móvil Responsive Design es la mejor opción para tu SEO. ¡SÉ UN EXPERTO EN DESARROLLO MÓVIL!

Via José M García, Paloma del Valle ►

 

 

Via Robin Good

The major search engines are focusing on creating the best relevant content.

Investing in original quality content creation is absolutely essential to SEO success in nowadays search environment.

In the great infographic you can see why is content the strategic key to search engine visibility.

Via Ivo Nový

How to align with, rather than battle against, Google's latest algorithm update.
On May 22nd Google's head of webspam, Matt Cutts, announced the launch of the search giant's latest algorithm update, Penguin 2.0.

Via TechinBiz

Search engine optimization has not been dependent on a minimal number of factors for a long time now, such as number of times a keyword appeared on a page, and it continues to become a more complex web of on and off-page factors every month. One of the more recent factors that has had an impact on search ranking is social media.

This infographic breaks down ways that social media influences the visibility of your website in search results, including:

 

Social media can help search engines find and index your content faster Likes, shares, retweets, etc. indicates to search engine that content is new and interesting, often leading to a temporary increase in rankingsYour content will increase in search results for people connected to youIncreases domain authority and the number of inbound links to your website
Via Lauren Moss, Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com

What is the best type of action in order to maximise your Page Reach? Facebook assigns different weight to different actions based on user behaviour. (#Facebook: Likes vs. Shares vs.

Via Martin (Marty) Smith

How do you build a website and marketplace to sell your products and services? Here are the 5 Best Companies for creating an eCommerce platform and marketplace.

Scenttrail Ratings
We've built stores with three of these five recommendations. Each has its good points and bad. Each is perfect for some and not so good for others. Here are our ratings:

ShopLocket
They don't mention this option, but we love the idea of being able to add a shopping cart to any piece of content without paying a big hosting operation like the 5 mentioned. If your ecommerce needs are small and located in social take a look at https://www.shoplocket.com/ .

Caveat
When you are camped on someone's ground THEY will always gain more benefit than you. The chance of a Shopify store outranking Shopify.com is zero. This issue is only a big deal for stores greater than 50,000 Stock Keeping Units and/or greater than $10M in sales. If you think you will eventually sell $10M+ you may want to create your own store / site. If you think it will take 10 years to reach $10M Shopify may be your best bet for ROI and speed. The PAIN comes when you transfer OFF of their platform, but we can discuss that at another time.

Shopify
Would be our first choice for most small to medium sized ecommerce implementations. The UI is clean and easy to understand. You can be up and running on Shopify in a matter of days. Inventory load is always the biggest pain and they have some ways around that.

Big Commerce
Sounds like Big Commerce fills the promotional hole we felt with Shopify. Most websites aren't very sophisticated in their coupons and promotions. If you are you will find Shopify limiting. Sounds like Big Commerce stepped in to fix the issue. And it can be a big issue since cross talk between offers and coupons can cause a train wreck. If you are sophisticated enough to make free shipping, % off and BOGO offers you may want to use Big Commerce.

Volusion
I wasn't wild about Volusion, but can't remember why. The security stuff the review mentions is marginally important. If you need highly secure ecommerce maybe they are better, but their inner-workings didn't seem as friendly as Shopify or as promotional savvy as Big Commerce.

Magento GO
I built our Story of Cancer store (now down) on Go and was impressed with the powerful business rules they include. Less than 10% of ecommerce sites need such power, but if you do Magento Go is probably your best bet. This is the power to say on a rainy Wednesday you want the price on yellow tops to be down10% when pared with shoes A, B or C. The cross-sale and up-sale wigets are powerful. The promotion, free shipping and coupons are powerful (once you figure out the convoluted logic and that problem is endemic).

Presta Shop
I don't know this option and am suspicious of FREE. Free is a risk because things go BUMP in the night on ecom sites. If you aren't a techie or don't have a techie working for you its good to have someone to call or email in an emergency like if you are bleeding personal information all over the web (say for an example lol). My concern here would be can the code keep up with needed changes (since how do they make money) and is it secure since security thanks to crazed hackers can be a real moveable feast (and I only meant "crazed hackers" in the nicest of ways so to do or say otherwise risks a "just because" attack, you know the attacks they launch just because they can).

Via Martin (Marty) Smith

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is no longer what it was a couple of years back. Now, an SEO specialist needs to widen his skill-set to survive in his profession, and shift towards Search Marketing Integration or SMI.

Via Martin (Marty) Smith

Via Marteq, Charles Mungai

The quality of content is of utmost importance to ranking. Content curation with enhanced annotations offers a way to post quality content and save time.

Via Robin Good, massimo facchinetti

Do you remember the house that Jack built? No, I can’t remember much about the nursery rhyme either, other than it became less about Jack’s house as each of the inhabitants ate one another…

Via malek

Great infographic showing the cascading waterfall of SEO and Google's river responds to a changing Internet.

 

 

Via Martin (Marty) Smith, John van den Brink

Many factors contribute to a website reaching and maintaining high positions in search results for target terms. These factors include user experience, site structure, alt tags on images, site maps, and more. Above all content is definitely still king. However, not all types of content can rule over the kingdom of SERPs. The following are 10 tips for writing content that will help your website rank higher in search results:

 

Write for users, optimize for robotsForget about keyword density and keyword stuffingIntegrate related keywords, synonyms, and grammatical variations into your contentUse Google’s free tools to find long-tail keyword variations that you can blend into your site copyFocus on writing long, in-depth, quality contentTarget high quality low competition long-tail keywordsWrite content that answer’s common questions from prospectsGet your content noticed and shared on social media platformsStrive to build your AuthorRank and develop your Google+ profileDon’t forget about title tags and meta descriptions, they are the first thing people typically see in search results

 

by Brianna Smith

Via Ivo Nový

Over the last year or so we have seen many changes to the way companies go about implementing their link building campaigns. With search engines like Google looking to distinguish between high quality websites with authority and spam sites producing numerous backlinks to climb up search rankings, it has meant that many traditional anchor text based links have become less valuable.

 

This has led to more and more companies focusing on social media to facilitate their link building campaigns. In this article we will explain how companies go about link building using social media.

 Find Out More: http://socialmediatoday.com/tom-shurville/1505981/link-building-using-social-media

Via Antonino Militello, malek